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Despite the benefits of accumulating savings, low-income individuals rarely use formal savings products. Researchers are partnering with a financial institution in Paraguay to evaluate the impact of a range of tablet-based applications, which remind people to save and help them make savings goals, on savings behavior of low-income individuals.

Researchers evaluated whether cash transfers and decision-making nudges could help low-income pregnant women in Nairobi, Kenya deliver where they wanted and in a high-quality facility. They found that cash transfers, conditioned on precommitment to a delivery facility, led to more effective birth planning and increased the likelihood that women delivered at higher-quality facilities.

To evaluate which strategies are most effective at preventing drunk driving and reducing traffic accidents, researchers evaluated an anti-drunk driving program in India. Overall, the anti-drunk driving program was effective in reducing traffic deaths and accidents, with these reductions driven entirely by police stations that implemented surprise checkpoints. Promising transfers to reserve police for good behavior more than doubled the number of drunk drivers brought to court.

Researchers use a randomized evaluation to examine the impact of bundled payments on Medicare spending, utilization, and quality of care for knee and hip replacements, two common and expensive medical procedures.

Approximately 85 percent of primary school age children in western Kenya are enrolled in school, but only about one-third of students finish primary school. Dropout rates are typically higher for girls; in 2001 the 6th grade dropout rate was 10 percent for girls and 7 percent for boys among students in this study’s comparison schools at baseline. This project was introduced in part to assist...